Projects

The Next Big Thing (as of February 27, 2013)

Christine Byl, author of the amazing wonderful fabulous forthcoming Dirt Work: An Education in the Woods tagged me to grab this baton (can I mix these metaphors) and participate in the grand experiment of blog-hopping. Here goes.... scan to the bottom for the next week's biggies, read Christine's Big Thing here.

What is the working title of the book?Botched Pilgrimage

Where did the idea come from for the book?Like most projects, from everywhere all at once, some perfect storm of stuff. I had been reading Bashō's Back Roads to Far Towns, I had been thinking about the fact that, when I'm off on ships working as a naturalist I never write poems... and there it was. Haibun about working in Antarctica, land of so many years of my waking dreams.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?Me? I want either Sigourney Weaver or Emily Blunt. Or... wait. This is poetry, you know? Don't tease me with such crazy questions.

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?Naturalist goes to land of her dreams (Antarctica) and reality smashes into fantasy (and ice, and leopoard seal).

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?It came together more quickly than other books I've written, in part because I think it will be a chapbook, and in part because it is so focused. A couple of months? In all honesty, I hate to answer this, because the other projects have taken so long. Years. Decades, even, in some cases.

What else about your book might pique the reader's interest? I hope to find a publisher who will agree to help me put a fine letter-press book AND a digital edition into the world. The digital edition will have added "bonus" stuff. Top secret. I love books, but I also am interested in new technologies. I think there must be a graceful way to use the best of both, which is what I tried to do at Broadsided Press (www.broadsidedpress.org) which I founded. Digital, yes. Physical, yes. Digital with the goal of wide distribution in the physical world. That kind of hybrid.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? Neither—it's poetry. I hope it will be published by a press. I don't expect any agent to represent me.